I've recently got into playing the DayZ mod for Arma 2 and I have to say that it is one of the best gaming experiences I've had in a while (balanced with a degree of frustration).

For those who are unfamiliar with the premise of DayZ essentially you play as a survivor of the zombie apocalypse and you have to ward off zombies whilst hunting around for food, drink, medical supplies and weapons. The thing that makes this game stand out from say the Resident Evil franchise is that there is no story, and no real aim to the game other than that which you create, and perhaps the best feature is the interaction with other players. Can you trust them? Are they just going to shoot you and steal your gear, are they lulling you into a false sense of security or actually just being friendly---you can never quite tell.

For me, having someone else to play DayZ with makes the experience much more rewarding as you can bounce ideas off one another to decide what your next aim is, and perhaps more importantly you have someone to pick up vital pieces of your gear should you die---which takes the edge off the frustration that comes with spending hours collecting loot and then dying and losing it all.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on DayZ? Is anyone excited for the standalone release?

I saw this game quite a while ago via a friend of mine and the concept looked really interesting.Having recently discovered that I don't get as nauseated playing fps games any more as I used to, I may give this one a shot.

Noth wrote:I saw this game quite a while ago via a friend of mine and the concept looked really interesting.Having recently discovered that I don't get as nauseated playing fps games any more as I used to, I may give this one a shot.

For me its a really odd game, some days I can't play it and others I can get sucked in for hours.

I think a lot of it is dependent on my mood. Its extremely immersive (is that a word?) and if you are really in the mood to get sucked into that world of surviving in the zombie apocalypse then its fucking brilliant. Other days I feel like 'meh I can't be bothered to run through the woods in pitch darkness for hours today'.

The mod is buggy as hell and I'm hoping most of this will be ironed out in the standalone. I've been killed more than once by zombies that were inside the floor - which is kinda annoying.

It is definitely different to any other shooter game I've played. You actually have to worry about how much noise your gun makes, conserving bullets and all that kind of thing. You even have to range properly with the sniper rifles. Much of the time you won't be firing any shots at all and focusing instead on finding loot to ensure you don't starve to death etc. It captures that surviving in a zombie apocalypse much, much better than say Dead Island did. But it does require being in the right mood to sit down and play it.

australopithecus wrote:I've been watching a lot of YT videos about this game recently, and I'm very impressed. Unfortunately, my PC is not built for gaming

I spent about £50 on a graphics card (most of the other hardware in my PC is pretty old) and now my PC runs most modern games. It handles Far Cry 3 in high settings without any trouble. Worth forking out for if you do want to play some games.